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Installing latest Open Source ATI drivers under Ubuntu 8.04

05-20-2008, 12:47 PM

NOTE: Ubuntu 8.10 already have all these updated drivers. Compiz is also supported (up to R500).

if you have some problem after upgrading to 8.10, make sure to remove all packages installed from the PPAs while in Ubuntu 8.04 with dpkg (ignoring eventual dependencies) and, before rebooting, reinstall all these packages from 8.10 official repositories with apt-get;

if compiz still isn't working, make sure you have compiz and compiz-gnome packages installed.

WARNING: the following guide is no longer actively supported. Please upgrade to Ubuntu 8.10 if you need updated radeon drivers.

This is a quick guide on installing latest versions of open source radeon drivers for Ubuntu 8.04.

0 - Introduction and status

This guide uses prebuilt - by the Ubuntu community - packages for mesa, libdrm, xserver-xorg-video-radeonhd, xserver-xorg-video-ati, so that they can be easily replaced with original ones if you want to revert this.

DRM modules are built and installed from sources using a script. Old ones are backupped with .orig extension.

AIGLX (and therefore Compiz) is not supported when using mesa 7.1 packages unless you also upgrade your xserver (for example using packages at PPA for xorg crack pushers: enable the repository and do a sudo apt-get dist-upgrade - WARNING: this is untested and may break your system, see also comment 20 and laters)

Answer N when asked to download newest git version and y when asked to install (backup of original modules will be created in

Code:

/lib/modules/`uname -r`/kernel/drivers/char/drm

directory with .orig extension).

Note that after every kernel upgrade and its reboot you should redo this step.

3 - Upgrading to latest libdrm and mesa packages

Remember that after installing the following mesa 7.1 packages AIGLX (and therefore Compiz) will not work (obliviously this is not a problem on R500 where Compiz never worked before), unless you also upgrade your xserver. If you have already working 3D and Compiz or you have a RS480 or RS690 with 3D or Compiz broken try first the updated mesa 7.0 packages at PPA for Andrius Štikonas that should also work with AIGLX/Compiz.

Add

Code:

deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/xorg-edgers/ubuntu hardy main

to System -> Administration -> Software sources -> Third party software

Although, I would really like to see a guide on how to install the radeon driver from git, because there already exists one for radeonhd, here at Phoronix. From personal expereince I know that the steps from the radeonhd guide don't exactly work for radeon because it required some other devel packages to be installed.

Comment

Right. I don't mind getting my hands dirty. I'm trying to figure out which branch of Mesa to check out and how to get it. The main one doesn't have any R500 chip ids, so I assume that's not what I want.

Comment

The 500-support branch in mesa is the right one. Not sure about the exact git commands to pull from a branch but may have time to tinker today. Best bet would be to hop onto the #radeon IRC channel and ask there since that's where most of the 5xx 3D discussion is happening. Alex is away for a few days but airlied and MostAwesomeDude have been making huge progress on the remaining fragment shader work and Mr Cooper and airlied have been working on some vblank issues. It's looking pretty good !